Should All Emergency Services Be Banned From Striking?

[anotheoldgit]

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/nov/24/nhs-workers-to-stage-four-hour-strike-as-pay-dispute-continues

[DTCwordfan]

Part of being in the Armed Services, AOG - imagine the chaos if Platoon Number 53 Kings Own said, "We are not going to fight the Russians unless we get 15% increase and 10 less hours a week."

[FrogNog]

//The Armed Forces do not have a right to strike, unlike the Police, The Emergency Services the NHS etc.//

Their career choice.

[Zeuhl]

/The answer for people who believe they are being underpaid or poorly treated is quite straightforward - take their labour elsewhere where they believe they will receive more pay or better conditions. Unless, of course, there are no such places in which case they don't have much of an argument./

As an employer myself i am instinctively attracted to that argument.
But employment needs to be a mutually satisfactory arrangement.

Objectively NJ, your argument is identical to the one used to justify extremist labour politics just flipped over i.e.

/The answer for companies who believe they are being asked for too many concessions from their workers is quite straightforward - take their company elsewhere where they believe they will receive more work for less money. Unless, of course, they can't move their businesses in which case they will be picketed by their employees until they go bust. Or if there are such places elsewhere, go there instead./

Sadly, that sort of intransigence on both sides resulted in a lot of that!

[campbellking]

Zeuhl's comment is interesting, as the 1% pay rise refused by the government was recommended by an independent pay review body. What we are finding is that an increasing number of nurses are leaving regular employment to join agencies, which cost the NHS far more to employ than giving them the recommended pay rise .

[jno]

I've heard that too, campbellking. Is anyone actually doing the sums there?

[Gromit]

The NHS is short of 20,000 nurses.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/10441408/Shortage-of-20000-nurses-in-NHS-report-warns.html

70% of Trusts say they are actively recruiting from other EU countries to plug the gap.

[Hypognosis]

The last I heard, the deal with agencies is that they take their 10% cut (or whatever, the employer gets a vacancy filled *rapidly* (no management time is lost to applicant sifts and interview panels etc) but it costs them more than a conventionally-hired employee for the duration of the appointment. (The agency employee stands a good chance of getting a poermanent post, having proved themselves).
Whilst with the agency, however, the employee has less take-home than the colleagues they work with.

And there was HR, thinking they ruled the roost and were indispensable. ;-)

[Peter Pedant]

Agency rates for nurses are higher than those in full time employment and that attracts them - but no holidays, sick pay, peeeensions

so there is a drift-back rate

One gets used to agency nurses saying - I am agency, I dont know what the hell I am doing....

[campbellking]

Hypo, a number of my nursing colleagues do long-term agency contracts (guaranteed employment for at least a year at a time, same hospital), and earn considerably more than 'permanent' employees. Staff working weekends can earn up to 3 or 4 times what those who are doing standard shifts earn. This understandably causes a fair amount of resentment.

[Hypognosis]

I lost two posts in a row due to the forum not liking use of less-than/greater than symbols as quotation brackets

--
@NewJudge

The right to strike should be absolute.
As should the right to dismiss anybody taking part in one.
--

Those two remarks appear to be in direct contradiction to one another.

I recall a news piece from a decade or so ago, where it was claimed that the majority of British employees had *never* set eyes on their actual contract of employment.

Its contents only ever come to light when someone feels that they've been dismissed unfairly and take it to tribunal.

Withdrawal of one's labour is a fairly straightforward breach of the employment contract terms. However a 'strike' is a declaration that the withdrawal of labour is only temporary, that there is every intention of returning to work - provided that fair treatment by management has been reinstated.

Any employer who treats their staff like a 19th c. mill owner ("work for the pay I offer or where else are ya gonna go?") deserves to have his workers walk out on him until they've gone bust.

However, this is health workers we are talking about. Telling them to go elsewhere for the money they expect to earn is trite and doesn't allow for the fact that they'd be ***taking their skills with them*** and landing the NHS with another bill for training of the self-cheapened replacement staff.

This is everything that is wrong with this country today: Big bonuses for the pen-pushing cost-cutters, net pay cuts (at 2% inflation, or worse) for the frontline care staff.

Any 'hole can look at a spreadsheet and work out how many people to fire or what pay rates to squeeze. Where's the skill in that?

[Hypognosis]

Thanks for the correction, campbellking. I was relating to a past experience of the use of agency staff and what I described was the case for them.

This is the first I've heard of this situation applying in the NHS. It's depressing that the management are ****ing our money up the wall, as per usual.

Resigning and coming back as agency staff on higher pay is, it has to be said, a genius alternative to going on strike. It's exactly like someone who the employer has spent a fortune training as a specialist in some area resigning and coming back as a consultant on much higher salary.

[THECORBYLOON]

The police do not have a right to strike.

[joeluke]

'Should All Emergency Services Be Banned From Striking?'

Yes

Binmen/teachers/council staff etc striking does not put lives at risk

Emergency services striking DO put lives at risk